Isn't this what grieving is all about - trying to make it part of our lives? Trying to enable ourselves to live with it, rather than "overcome" it?

-- Stefan Balzter

The first mad anguish fades to heavy sorrow and after a long while into a soft weakness of tears that can be blinked away before anyone sees.

-- anonymous

When you get to the end of your rope,
tie a knot and hang on.

-- Franklin Roosevelt

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Thus have I reason to be fond of grief.

-- William Shakespeare, from King John

"Listen mother," said Father Zossima. "Once in olden times a holy saint saw in the Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only one, whom God had taken. `Knowest thou not,' said the saint to her, `how bold these little ones are before the throne of God? Verily, there are none bolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. "Thou didst give us life, oh Lord," they say, "and scarcely had we looked upon it when Thou didst take it back again." And so boldly they ask and ask again that God gives them at once the rank of angels...' That's what the saint said to the weeping mothers of old. He was a great saint and he could not have spoken falsely."

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky,
from The Brothers Karamozov

The highest privilege there is, is the privilege of being allowed to share another's pain. You talk about your pleasures to your acquaintances; you talk about your troubles to your friends.

-- Fr. Andrew SDC
Seven Words from the Cross


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